Meaning & Origins

Mainly U.S.: transferred use of the English surname, which is from any of a number of places so called in England. These have various origins; the most common is from Old English ǣwiell ‘source (of a river)’ + tūn ‘settlement, enclosure’. It was borne (but dropped) as a given name by the American bandleader and trombonist Alton Glenn Miller (1904–44).

French: topographic name for someone who lived by a plantation of trees, Old French plantier, with fused preposition and definite article du ‘from the’, or a habitational name for someone from a place called Le Plantier in Dordogne.